The Discoverer (56 page)

Why did she do it?

On that fateful, maelstrom-like April evening, as I sat looking at her body and put the muzzle of the pistol to my temple, I noticed that one hand, her fingers, seemed to be pointing to her lungs. Was that it? Was this, the Assembly Hall incident, Margrete’s story? Did it also tell why she had done it? For what if that misplaced applause was related to this sight before me, a shot in the heart. What if her shouts of ‘Bravo’ were as much a cry of protest as an impulsive, barefaced show of enthusiasm. She simply could not bear to hear the ‘Grosse Fugue’. I bent over the dead body and touched a fingertip with one of my own. I seem to recall feeling the pain in my chest already then, the nasty twinge of discomfort which would plague me for a long time, also in prison.

From the graze on her brow and the smear of blood on the door jamb I guessed that she must have hit her head off the wall, that she might even have spent a long time kneeling there, banging her head against the brick wall before going to get the gun. I had never understood: the molten gold in
Margrete’s eyes was the result of the darkness within her. It was a light which had been constantly on the point of going out, which fought against a
blackness
. That was why they had been so beautiful. I had only seen the glow, not the darkness surrounding it.

A lot happened during those hours. I was confused, I was devastated by grief, but my mind was also uncannily clear, almost as if I had taken some sort of thought stimulant. I put on gloves and wiped the weapon clean. I also wiped the powder residue off her wrist. I was bewildered, I was shattered, but I was alert and businesslike when it came to removing all signs which could point to Margrete having shot herself. And when it came to leaving clues which would, in due course, point to me. I took the Luger’s old wrappings, the oilcloth and ammunition box from the cupboard in my workshop and hid them so well that it would take the police a long time to find them. I also took into account my older brother’s possible qualms of conscience – he knew about the gun. I was distraught, but at the same time so dazzlingly
clear-sighted
that the police investigators found only what I wanted them to find, and only at the stages at which I wished them to find them. My own version of what had happened, why I had done it – and it would be a long time before I told it – also took form, almost without my being aware of it, during those hours. It was watertight. Utterly consistent. Perfect, on both the emotional and the rational plane. Just so you know: getting convicted of murder is not as easy as people think.

It is morning at Balestrand. Kamala is asleep. I sit on the balcony of the hotel room looking out on the broad expanse of the fjord. I savour the light, I cannot recall seeing light like this anywhere else in the world. On the lawn below, Benjamin is lying outside his tent gazing up at the drifting clouds, when, that is, he is not shooting glances at the dragons on the spire of the English Church. It is a grand sight: the big, round tent, like a Mongolian
ger
, and him lying there with a blade of grass in his mouth. The other guests must be quite taken aback when they look out of their windows and see this: Benjamin, in Karakorum, Ghengis Khan’s old capital, an utterly content
individual
on a boundless plain. I remember when Dad came home from the hospital and told us that we had a brother who was Mongoloid. I thought he was talking about Globoids, the aspirins. Dad certainly looked as if he had a headache. He told us all about the chromosomes, and how Benjamin had one x too many, as it were. In my universe, Benjamin stands as the first
representative
of the so-called Generation X. He may not be capable of appreciating irony, nonetheless he has lived his life inside inverted commas.

I think about our expeditions into Lillomarka together. All the camping
out. All the stories. I have wondered: could I have been trying to hide him. And myself. He found me, though. Benjamin was the first person to show me that I had imagination, that I could do something with the worlds I dreamed up, outside of my own head. Together we established a position on the
sideline
, an Outer Mongolia which was also an Outer Norway, an outside left. Thinking back to Harastølen and the refugees: I know why I am so obsessed with this fear of foreigners. It is because of Benjamin. If Benjamin has taught me anything it is tolerance. He broadened my view – the first, possibly, to do so – of what a human being is, and can be.

Rakel comes walking towards him. Benjamin points eagerly at something in the sky. Rakel sits down, puts an arm round him. She is another one – a hugger, a holder. They sit for a while, peering up at the clouds, chatting, then they start to pack up. They are going to catch a boat back to Fjærland then drive home in the truck. With a stop at a riding camp along the way. Benjamin is very happy with Rakel and her husband. Rakel tells me they are going to write a book together, the three of them. About trailer-trucks, long-distance lorry driving. Benjamin has already come up with a title:
The Golden Horde
.

Yesterday I went for a stroll along the road by the beach, past Belehaugene, the two ancient barrows, to take a look at the storybook villas built here a century ago by the artists: half
stabbur
, half stave church. Then I raised my eyes, only – and again: why was I surprised – to find myself still more entranced by the fjord, the mountains. I almost caught myself humming ‘Beauteous is the Land’. And once more I had to ask myself: Is this really Norway? If any Norwegian should become too blasé, start to hate their country, then they should take a trip to Balestrand, or sail between the unbelievably high
mountains
around the green fjord running up to Fjærland, expose themselves to the silver threads of the waterfalls and glimpses of wild side valleys. I know opinions differ on this – I know it took the Romantic movement to change people’s ideas about the countryside and what it had to offer – but if you ask me, there is no doubt: Norway’s great asset is its scenery. I have made caustic remarks about it, I have scoffed at it, but on reflection it seems
perfectly
understandable that it should have been
Song of Norway
, that regular holiday brochure of a film, which prompted Kamala to come to this country. In other words, I have the splendour of the Norwegian fjords to thank for the fact that, in a roundabout way, she eventually found me.

Its scenery is Norway’s most valuable commodity. Sognefjord is our Grand Canyon, our Guilin and our Machu Picchu all rolled into one. That is why the product, the service which the OAK Quartet is designing is so important. Often it crosses my mind that this could be Norway’s only hope:
to translate what Sognefjord represents, our greatest natural asset, into form, into thought, into software.

One afternoon Kamala and I took part in one of the planning sessions on board the
Voyager
. Before the meeting, Martin, that never-resting wizard with copper pans and spices, served up a whole
rijsttafel
of delicious little dishes. They had put up the boom tent to give a bit of shade; it was hot, not a cloud in the sky. The way they talked, their enthusiasm, reminded me of the fun I used to have as a small boy, walking along the beach and popping whatever took my fancy into a bucket: shells, stones, feathers, bits of metal. They do the same thing with information.

Each day they gather on deck to discuss new possibilities arising from what they have seen, explored, studied, heard. And tasted. They are mapping out this part of Norway in a way I would never have believed possible. At each new stop along Sognefjord they search for what Carl who, having an American mother does not baulk at using English terms, calls the place’s ‘webness’, its ability to interconnect with other places, through its hidden ‘links’. They mix together all manner of subjects: history, folklore, economics, geography, language, geology. Sometimes I find this work touchingly
reminiscent
of the television series I once made, but it reminds me even more of my Titanic Project X. They are in the process of doing what I could not: creating a network in which every point of intersection is the centre.

At this particular meeting I surprised them all by suggesting that their main entry on Balestrand should focus on its tourist industry, this place having been one of the main travel hubs in Norway ever since the
nineteenth
century. They could present an outline of its colourful history, with the German Kaiser and all; I tried to make them see how great it would look with a little cavalcade of the town’s more exotic and somewhat eccentric visitors, from King Chulalongkorn of Siam and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to Egyptian princes and Indian maharajahs. I got quite carried away, suggested that they might also weave in an item on the many old and atmospheric wooden hotels along Sognefjord. They could even insert a link to a page on souvenirs, on which they could show how the rugs and baskets of the old days had evolved into glass polar bears, wooden trolls and pewter Viking ships. And whatever they did – my voice almost cracked with
excitement
– they must not forget the cruise ships, those ‘floating hotels’ which were such a common sight on the fjord, in the first half of the twentieth century particularly. I launched into a rapturous and detailed description of the
Stella Polaris
, sang the praises of the picture of the
Stella Polaris
on Esefjord. Could anyone conceive of a prouder, more evocative sight for a
Norwegian – that scenery, coupled with what was arguably the loveliest, the most elegant Norwegian cruise ship of all time, a vessel which might have been designed by Jules Verne for use as a spaceship? I went on talking long into the lovely May night. The others gaped at me – staggered, but also to some degree hooked. Kamala glanced across at me, smiling, as if she were asking: Who are you?

That same evening, still on the subject of travel mementoes, I told them about the disc which the Voyager probes carried with them into space and which could, to some extent, be regarded as a collection of souvenirs from Earth. This disc held, for instance, photographs of the Taj Mahal, the UN building, the Great Wall of China and Monument Valley. Its project was really not that different from the one on which Kristin and her friends were working. Only on a larger scale. While the OAK Quartet was presenting Sognefjord, the Voyager disc was designed to present Tellus herself,
including
the species which goes under the name
Homo sapiens
.

A thought crossed my mind. I hunted through Hanna’s choice
collection
of CDs, found Beethoven’s string quartet no. 13, opus 130, the emotive Cavatina movement. They were clearly mystified. Until I told them that this movement, together with over eighty minutes’ worth of other music –
including
Bach and Mozart, but also Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, songs by the Navajo Indians and the court gamelan of Java – had all been recorded onto a gold-plated copper disc which had been hurled out into the cosmos – a sort of high-tech message in a bottle.

The purposeful mood which prevails on board, transmits itself to my writing. My urge to write. I have written a lot. I have been writing by hand, as
Margrete
did. I have managed fine without my old IBM typewriter with its
globe-like
printing element. Possibly because I am on a boat, a small sphere in itself, covered in symbols. The landscape, the fjord itself, also fire my imagination. Several times on this trip I have fancied that I am on a journey through
Margrete
. Through her complex mind. The shape of the fjord resembles that of my memories. Just as when deep inside the smallest arm I am still conscious of the main fjord, so too in the deepest branches of my recollection I never lose sight of the middle part: those hours when everything happened, that evening when I came home from a World’s Fair and found her dead.

I knew I had to hold off calling the police. I had to think, I had to come up with a plan, I had to collect my thoughts, I needed time to take a look around, make my own examination of the scene. I staggered about, stumbled from room to room, thinking, searching; searching, at first, as if in my sleep, and then, after a while, wide awake. It is no exaggeration to say that I found things
on my nocturnal wanderings that changed my life. I found, for example, her pearl necklace.

A picture comes back to me. She is standing facing me, looking straight into my eyes while her fingers play with the string of pearls around her neck. I know this must have been a fateful situation. This too I know: she might be alive today if I had loved her more. Scientists believe they have proof that animals are sometimes encouraged to stay alive by some sense that they are loved. It took me many years to discover the real reason – the one behind the ostensible, banal explanation with which I had long comforted myself – for why Margrete’s condition deteriorated so drastically after my trip to Lisbon: only
then
did she see that she was not loved. Lisbon, what happened there, was the famous last straw, the weight in the balance.

The cracks had been appearing in our marriage long before that, though. As many people know from bitter experience, the extraordinary can very quickly become commonplace. During our first months together, and indeed our first years, I did not think I would ever cease to be amazed by Margrete. My head was in a spin, I was walking on air, I was deliriously happy. I am thinking not least, again, of the physical side – and this despite my
unrealistic
, essentially Utopian, expectations. My notions of sex were associated, after all, with some sort of mechanical world in which the best one could hope for was an intricate meshing of gear-wheels. Margrete took me into an erotic
universe
involving causes and effects that far outdistanced this, with connections beyond my comprehension. If I close my eyes and think of that first year, all I can see is a white bedroom and a golden idol, and how in bed she led me through room after room, throwing open door after door and showing me new wings within myself. In my euphoria, in my delight at being unwrapped, I did not see that I was living with a woman who had already unfolded, who was more fully evolved than I was.